I slammed my hand down on the door of Precious’s enclosure, where I’d tucked her in with some sunflower seeds, and latched it shut just in time. I ignored the furious chittering and squeaks from inside and blurted back, “Yes,” before anything resembling good sense could assert itself.
I had to work extremely hard not to think better of what I was doing, even as I followed Orion through the corridors. I couldn’t even distract myself by watching for attacks or traps; nothing with a mind, right or otherwise, was attacking Orion lately. He’d grown three inches so far this year, at least, and his shoulders and arms were straining every seam of his t-shirt, and he’d showered and his silver hair was dark and curling round his neck, and I was having to devote really enormous effort to ignoring that I was being a truly colossal wanker, when I suddenly realized where we were, and stopped, everything forgotten in appalled outrage, on the threshold of the gym.
Orion didn’t even break stride. He sailed onwards through the doors and into the half of the gym that was left over from the obstacle course. The famed cherry trees had appeared this week and were just getting ready to make a proper scene, tiny pink and white buds dotting the dark limbs.
I almost couldn’t believe he’d done it. I went after him blankly, waiting for him to explain this was some sort of joke, which would itself be in poor taste. He just stopped under one particularly laden tree and earnestly began spreading out a ragged blanket for our picnic, while I stood staring down at him, trying to decide if he was literally insane, and whether I liked him enough to pretend he wasn’t. I had already liked him enough to drink the horrible tea-stained hot water he’d brought me, so the answer to that was almost certainly yes, but I wasn’t sure I liked him enough to picnic in the gym with him.
It’s just as well that I was too appalled to move, I suppose, because that’s why I was still on my feet when Orion looked up and saw something coming. I had no idea in that first moment what it was he’d seen; his face didn’t actually reach any kind of positive or negative expression, he only focused on something behind me. But I knew that something was coming at my back, and that I hadn’t heard it or picked up on it. That was warning enough.
Even as I turned round to find out what it was, my hands were already moving in the shielding spell that Alfie had given me, two weeks ago. I’d bitterly made myself ask him for it, knowing he’d say exactly what he said, “Of course, El, delighted.” Bollocks. It had to be one of the best spells even his London enclave family had, worth loads in trade. In here it would probably have brought more than my sutras, since a decently skilled senior could cast it during graduation, and the sutras wouldn’t do anyone any good until they got out alive.
It wasn’t a shield spell, really. It was an evocation of refusal—not to be too boringly technical, an evocation is more or less taking something intangible and bringing it into material reality. What the evocation of refusal produced—in Alfie’s hands—was a neat translucent dome roughly seven feet across. As long as he could hold it up—casting alone he could manage as long as three minutes, which is an eternity in the graduation hall—he could refuse anything he didn’t want inside, including mals, hostile magic, flying debris, loud farts, et cetera. And while there’re plenty of spells that will let you seal out the world, the extremely special quality of this one was that it let in all the things you did want, such as oxygen untainted by any poison gas in the vicinity, or healing spells from your allies. I’d seen Alfie use it for the first time back during our run against the evil ice mountains. He’d brought it out several times since then to save random other kids’ lives. He wasn’t one of the enclavers who whinged about helping other kids; his grace went both ways, or maybe he’d secretly internalized the fantasy of noblesse oblige, because he’d dived wholeheartedly into the project of rescuing everyone in his path.
But when I cast the evocation, I got a globe nearly twelve feet across, which showed every sign of staying up for as long as I bothered to keep it going, and after I put it round something, I could move the globe and all its desirable contents, meaning I could scoop up a double handful of kids and deposit them in a different spot on the field, no mals included. That was a game-changing move. I could claim that was why I’d asked for the spell, for everyone’s sake, but that would be bollocks, too. I hadn’t known for sure what I could do with it when I asked him to give it to me. I’d just known it was a really top spell, and I could see that it had room to grow—the kind of room that I could fill up.